During the 'Invincibles’ campaign, Arsene Wenger’s overcoat habitually stopped
just below his waist. Now, after eight trophyless seasons, it hangs all the
way down to his knees.

The sharp of mind and frivolous of character will not have failed to spot a pattern. Is Wenger’s coat to blame? Or if not the root of Arsenal’s ills, is the coat perhaps some sort of ghostly marker?

Brian Keenan refused to shave while being held hostage in Lebanon in the 1980s, and over time his lengthening beard a haunting gauge of his years of deprivation. Is Wenger’s coat penitently performing a similar role?

What is certain is that the coat has taken on a quasi-mythical status of its own.

There are not one, but eight Twitter accounts devoted to it, as well as a Facebook group, a blog and countless internet memes, the most famous of which sees the coat Photoshopped to a height of roughly 25 feet,lifting an indignant Wenger clean off the ground.

The mystery of Wenger’s coat is only deepened by the revelation that it is no longer available for the public to buy. Arsenal withdrew it from the club shop around two years ago, and now stocks merely a shortened version, ambitiously priced at £110.

So why was it pulled? Did Wenger become cognisant of its awful predictive capacity? Was he attempting to protect us from it? Or did he alone want to harness its power? According to a spokesman for the club's retail arm: